Because my historian didn’t have much to do leading up to Wood Badge, it was her job to monitor all the district and council events throughout the year, and ask staff members from those districts to make sure and be there with flyers and the ability to show the video, if possible, and promote the course. REMEMBER, it’s important to get THEIR name and number to follow up, not just hand out fliers!

My name is Steve, I’m the SPL for the upcoming course W2-315-19-1 in Montana Council. Let’s talk about some context about Wood Badge in Montana Council. For a long time, CDs have been out in the wilderness having to recruit staff and participants for their course, on their own. There really hasn’t been a holistic effort to provide or talk about WB as training and so a lot of the efforts have been one-off, reinvent-the-wheel-every-time kind of deals. This year, we’re shifting gears and looking at the long-term Wood Badge recruitment process from participants to alumni/staff.

What was originally supposed to be an occurrence for my course, the WB team and I have started a website that started as a landing page to fill our drip email marketing list. Eventually, I converted it to a fully-fledged WordPress site that has a lot more info for reference, and a blog to share promos. https://woodbadgemontana.org We are running the website concurrently with social media efforts on our Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/woodbadgemontana/. All roads lead to the email funnel. Additionally, each staff on the course (and future courses) are being issued simple business cards that lead to the website and have the upcoming course dates. (template available at https://www.canva.com/design/DADR7ejHti8/BK4rENPoR1vX2YarR4XbSw/view)

The drip email list is done in MailChimp. It’s 5 emails sent over about 2 weeks, and ramps up the tactic to push people to our council’s online registration efforts. If they click on a link, they’re kicked out of the automation. When we have confirmation of the registration, they are put on the “course list” for the course they registered for. On the W2-315-19-1 they’re drip emailed info about the course, including staff bios, urging them to recruit others, and general WB info.

Hi, I’m Jeff, CD for W2-315-19-1. Another piece to what we are doing is to use the tools Steve mentioned to get into a year-round recruiting mentality. For a long time course directors have recruited only for their course and in Montana we don’t have a lot of people to start with, so if we find someone interested in the next course or another in the future we want to get them registered and take advantage of the contact.

We offer scholarships to those that want to take WB, 50% off tuition.
However, we also have a 30 day window for a sponsorship. Let me explain: staff meeting day 1, each staff member gets one sponsorship code and they may use that one sponsorship code for a face to face invite to a leader to take the course. It’s only good for 30 days. It creates a sense of urgency to sign up because the course will sell out. It creates a personal invite or like a ‘golden ticket’. It makes that invite so special and has a value of 50% off tuition. So the person pays their 50% down, plugs in the sponsorship code and BAM they are paid in full. We tell them we had to select one person to be on the course and I selected you! Quite powerful. And successful. My course sold out and I’m at 56 paid in full. Hard working staff and

Increase your one on one contact by creating a triflold table top display for use at Training events, Recognition events, Blue and Gold dinners,etc., Include several Wood Badger to help increase your contacts and handout flyers.
I also had great recruiting success when I attended parent meetings at several packs and troops. Again that one on one contact and your enthusiasm makes all the difference.

I have found one on one is key. However, the “what” and “why” of wood badge needs to be more prevalent in our marketing, with this upcoming group of leaders. I have found that regardless of how they heard about Wood Badge, the personal context and connection is very important.

Another way we’re coordinating better is by using a Discord Server. A Discord serve is free to set up and is a great way to collaborate amongst staff, participants as they sign up, and can offer an easy way for leads/potential participants to get answers in real time from staff members.

In previous years we struggled to get 35-40 participants. For my course I set the bar at the TOP and told everyone that “We Will have a FULL Course.” And that anything less was not acceptable. Then I, Personally, stayed with that challenge.I set goals of a number of signed up participants by certain dates. Then I hit Social Media HARD. Used a FB page I had created years earlier to have FUN and “REMIND” those who have gone through before of their great memories and why they NEED to get someone they know to attend. If each person just signed up 1 person; we are full for decades. I used many memes in social media. Cheered on every time we got a new participant signed up. I also got out to District Roundtable’s and Personally talked to each district. But instead of asking for anyone who has attended in the past to raise their hands, I asked for those who have not and asked the others to please Talk to them about what it “changed” in their life. I believe this is why we not only filled my course but the next one as well.

In Northern Star Council, we use a multi-media approach. We promote the courses on our Council and District websites, at monthly Roundtables (with online flyers), District newsletter emailing every two weeks, and I do a lot of promoting on our District Facebook page. Our Council holds a winter course (January – February) and a fall course (September – October), Our winter 2019 course filled early, our fall 2019 course only has a few openings left and we’ve already opened registration for our winter 2020 Wood Badge. We have no problem filling spots.

In the past we’ve had a lot of “this course is better” and “no my course is better” during promotion. What does that show the participants listening? Not Wood Badge teamwork, that’s for sure. The past few years we’ve taken a WIN ALL YOU CAN approach – all the right lessons from that of course. 😉 That helped immensely, changing recruiting to “we would love to have you join us at this course, but if you can’t make it, there are other opportunities as well.” I used to get ask by people which course they should attend. I don’t get asked that anymore.

We tried something else for this year but could improve on. We decided to give people a taste of Wood Badge through videos on social media. For instance, a quick lesson on the stages of team development (basically, these are the stages and a few characteristics of each), suggest they think about different teams they are involved with and the stages they are in, then explain that at Wood Badge they’ll get a full lesson on this and how to move their team through the stages. A great next step is EDGE, then another on Leading EDGE/teaching EDGE since that combines the stages and EDGE. Any chance this could be made at the area level for a more professional touch?

Another thought: Try to throttle down the talk of critters so much! It seems to be a big turn off to people considering going to the course. It makes them think that’s what Wood Badge is all about, because that’s what they keep hearing about!

I’m Pat Moss, the Course Director for the Greater Los Angeles Area Council Centennial Course W4-33-19. Our recruiting efforts ended up filling our course to 56 people with a very long waiting list — so we decided to run two courses this year! Now we have a spring course and a sister course in the fall.

How did we do this? Easy, we ignored all the old methods of marketing. We started offering BALOO and IOLS 4 to 6 times a year, and then recruited participants from those courses. Not only did our Council Training numbers go up, but we easily found eager scouters for Wood Badge.